VLCC acquires Vanity Cube, aims to expand its reach with beauty services at home

With the addition of beauty on-demand to the existing range of services, VLCC will be able to further extend its reach and availabilityETBrandEquity | June 06, 2017, 19:00 IST

VLCC, a globally renowned brand in beauty and wellness industry, today announced its acquisition of Vanity Cube, one of the earliest entrants in the beauty-services-at-home segment, signaling its foray into the fast growing ‘On-Demand Services’ sector. To be rebranded VLCC Vanity Cube, the company currently offers beauty services at home to its customers in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai.

Commenting on the acquisition, Vandana Luthra, founder, VLCC, said, “On-demand beauty services have a huge growth potential and will define the next level of disruption in the beauty and wellness industry. There is no clear market leader in the nascent on-demand beauty services space. VLCC, with its presence of over 250 wellness centers and salons in 120 cities across 11 countries as well as 76 skill development academies, through whose portals over 10,000 students pass out annually, will have a distinct edge over competition in this domain. With the addition of beauty on-demand to the existing range of services, VLCC will be able to further extend its reach and availability. The immediate plan is to scale up the operations of Vanity Cube beyond the current 2 cities to 10 cities over the next 18 months.”

Vanity Cube was established by Renu Bisht and Pragya Upadhyay in the year 2014. A key differentiator of the start-up has been its ability to deliver services within 90 minutes of booking an appointment. The company is currently operational in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai and has served over 50,000 customers till date, with 60% customers availing a repeat within 45 days of the first service. The company had earlier raised Series A funding from Unicorn Ventures and angel investors, who continue to be minority stakeholders in the company.

Being a leader in the Beauty & Wellness services segment, the foray into On-Demand Beauty Services is a natural progression for VLCC. Already, nearly 60% of the company’s revenue from its wellness centres in India comes from beauty treatments and services.

Commenting on the synergy between the two businesses, Renu Bisht, Co-Founder, Vanity Cube said, “We, at Vanity Cube, aspire to be the private stylists for each of our customers. We understand that beauty is personal to every individual and hence, we have always focused on delivering high quality services at competitive costs. With VLCC’s expertise, years of experience and scale of reach in beauty services, we will now be able to not only deliver an upgraded and expanded offering to our existing customer base, but also achieve our goal to be a pan-India operation.”

Pragya Upadhyay, co-founder, Vanity Cube added, “We are excited to be a part of the VLCC family. VLCC is a pioneer in the beauty and wellness industry and has always given utmost importance to service quality. We are confident that VLCC Vanity Cube will soon be a preferred brand in the on-demand beauty services category across the country, and not just where we currently operate.”

The organized On-Demand Beauty Services market has gained good traction in the last couple of years, with numerous start-ups having mushroomed in this segment, and is estimated to be anywhere between US$ 2 billion – US$ 3 billion. In India, the industry is growing at a compounded rate of 18.6%, fuelled by affluent and middle class customers.